Geez-Louise what a week. I have had personal things go wrong. I have had personal things go real right. I have had professional things go wrong. Then right. Then wrong. All in a week – up and down, down and up. You spin me right round, baby Right round like a record, baby Right round round round ~ Dead or Alive I have been having a difficult time not blaming this roller coaster on Mercury in Retrograde – Ryan (my super cute husband) teases me about this – but between you and me, I am pretty sure that this week’s turbulence is its fault. What to do? What to do? First, I practice (yoga, chanting, Reiki, breathwork, meditation – every damn day) and then I smudge a lot, often multiple times a day. I started the practice as a way to clear my living space, than it moved into my office. I have even been known to do it outside under the watchful gaze of the sun and the moon. I believe that by bringing the smoke of sacred herbs, resins and woods around me I am able to clear my energy field. And so I do. It is a simple ritual that anyone can employ. Many cultures have used the burning of sacred herbs or wood in some form for millennia. Anthropologists believe that the practice of using sacred smoke for medicinal and spiritual practices dates back to prehistoric times. The Native Peoples are known for their use of white sage in medicinal and spiritual practices. At Catholic Church the priest enter the sacristy with Pontifical Incense (a...

For years I had tried to create space for a daily yoga practice in my life. I marked out hours on my schedule, kept a mat on the floor, talked myself into poses, and sometimes even managed to practice several days running. Still even those on some level fell short. It wasn’t until I had worked a fourteen hour day and was berating myself for not immediately moving to my mat that I finally understood that my thought patterns were holding me back. At some point I had conditioned myself to believe that a daily practice was only if an hour or more had passed. That night my perspective on what a daily practice was shifted drastically and I took in with a little more than a breath that practice is not defined by time; practice simply means practice. Through that shift in my mindset finding space in my life to practice came easy and at some point, although I always move to my mat with a particular intention, fitting it in is now merely a habit. In hindsight it seems so simple. Yet it took me years to find my way to that understanding. More than ten have passed since that moment, and I am grateful each day as I take time to find my breath and connect to my deeper...